c. 1998 Religion News Service

ROME _ Johanan Vitta had never laid eyes on the paintings he so fervently claims are rightfully his. At 56, he has no memories at all of his grandfather’s prized collection of 19th-century Italian oil canvases.

Among them are Giovanni Fattori’s”Cavalry Soldier with Two Horses,”and a Silvestro Lega, entitled”Girl Sewing.”There’s an Odoardo Borrani and several by Telemaco Signorini. One of them,”The Baker’s Shop in Settignano,”depicts a Tuscan village not far from Siena, where the Vitta family stashed the 32 paintings on their way out of Florence to flee the Nazis.

The Vittas, among Italy’s pre-war Jewish population of 50,000, had the good fortune of returning after the war. But their valuable possessions, it seemed, would be gone forever.

That is, until last October, when five of the lost paintings showed up in Rome on a plane from New Zealand, where they had been transported some 55 years ago by Arthur Harris Fraser, a military officer stationed in Siena who is said to have bought them for an unknown price.

Vitta, of Florence, and his brother Nathanel, of Turin, learned about the discovery of the five Macchiaioli school paintings, with an estimated market value of $1 million, by way of a phone call from a bureaucrat.

The Vittas represent a small but growing number of children and grandchildren of Holocaust victims who contend that art once belonging to their forebears is rightfully theirs because the valuables were not willfully sold. If not for the Nazi invasion, they argue, the art, or the profits from its sale, would be theirs.

Many of the claims are coming to light now for the simple reason that the art is being rediscovered, much like the five paintings owned by the Fraser family until 1994, when they were donated to the Dunedin Public Art Gallery in New Zealand. The gallery, believing the art was fairly acquired, willingly loaned it to a Florence art gallery for its Macchiaioli exhibition. “They acquired the paintings in good faith some years ago and they loaned these paintings in good faith,”said Judith Trotter, New Zealand’s ambassador to Italy.

What’s surprising, say restitution experts, is that more claims are not being made for art treasures. Private homes in Germany, France and Austria were looted of tens of thousands of artistic gems, and at least 2,000 art works in France alone remain unclaimed.

Jewish leaders in Rome, Genoa, Turin and Milan, where most of Italy’s Jews lived during the war, said they knew of no claims made in their area for looted art.

Last year the Italian government set up a procedure for returning looted art and other valuables. The decision came after Jewish property that had come from the Bank of Italy in Trieste mysteriously surfaced in a vault of the finance ministry in Rome. The valuables, including watches, silver place settings and a set of gold teeth, were returned to the Jewish community of Trieste. No one has claimed the property.

Unlike the Vittas, most wealthy European Jews were looted by the Nazis. Hitler had grandiose plans of erecting a museum in Linz, Austria, where he had been a student, that would feature at least 1,000 works of the finest: Picasso, Manet, Renoir and Cezanne, and others.

In Italy, the Nazis plundered Europe’s finest art shrines, like the Uffizi Gallery and the Pitti Palace in Florence.

Most of the looted works have been returned to their rightful places.

But for many individuals, the search continues.”My mother is always looking for some paintings that were in her house”in Ferrara, said Dora Liscia, an art historian in Florence.”She goes to all these auctions and looks in galleries.”But Liscia, whose mother, Jenny Bassani, now 73,”has never found any.” Nor is she likely to, said Mario Bondioli Osio, who heads Italy’s Interministerial Commission for Art and the Culture Ministry’s Office for Art Restitution.”I would say about 90 percent of the art looted in private homes was stolen by other Italians,”Osio said.”It’s hanging in someone’s home, or it’s been sold.” (BEGIN OPTIONAL TRIM)

It was Osio who informed the Vitta brothers of the paintings after looking them over with Italian customs agents in a Rome airport hangar.

The officials were working from a list of claims, including one made 50 years earlier by Edoardo Vitta, the father of the two brothers.”If I get them back, I will never sell them,”Johanan said of the paintings.

Vitta may never have that luxury. The proper ownership of art that changed hands a half century ago is a messy business in which the courts have little guidance. In February, an Italian civil court ruled in favor of the Dunedin gallery, saying it and Fraser had acquired the art”in good faith.”But a higher court stayed the decision, pending an appeal.”It’s very difficult to decide because after 50 years there are arguments on both sides,”Osio said

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The most visible art claim is on two paintings by Austrian expressionist Egon Schiele that are on loan to the Museum of Modern Art in New York from the Leopold collection in Vienna.

The claims, made by U.S. relatives of two Holocaust victims, prompted the Manhattan district attorney to stop the museum from returning the works, pending a possible criminal suit.

The legal maneuver startled the art world.”It’s had a chilling effect on exhibitions,”said Peter C. Sutton, director of the Hartford, Conn., Wadsworth Atheneum museum.”We have to have immunity from seizures, otherwise the loaning of art could be imperiled.” Sutton has been involved in a similar dispute. Last May he made the gut-wrenching decision to return to Italy a beloved 16th-century painting by Jacopo Zucchi, entitled”The Bath of Bathsheba.” The painting, like most Nazi loot, traveled a circuitous route, from Rome to the Italian embassy in Berlin, where it disappeared after the war. It then turned up in Paris, and finally landed in Hartford, Conn., where Wadsworth bought it in 1965 from a French art dealer.

In Hartford an Italian art aficionado recognized the painting. He informed the Italian government, which began trying to pry it loose from Wadsworth.

But the museum resisted, saying it acquired the piece legitimately.

Shortly after becoming Italy’s art restitution czar, Osio restarted negotiations with the Wadsworth. Last May, the deed was done.

In return for the Zucchi, with an estimated market value of $700,000, Italy has agreed to pay for a 3-month exhibition at Wadsworth, entitled,”Caravaggio and His Italian Followers.” The show runs April 23-July 26, and will feature five Caravaggio’s,including”St. John the Baptist”and”Ecstasy of St. Francis,”which Wadsworth bought in 1943, becoming the first U.S. museum to acquire a Caravaggio.”We were resistant with good reason to return the (Zucchi) picture without some compensation to the citizens of Hartford,”Sutton said.”We’ll miss it a lot but we will have been compensated in some way.””We both wanted to find a solution to it,”he said.”It dragged on too long.” Osio agreed, calling the accord,”a model for other disputes. It was amicable,”he said.”I’m very proud of it.”

DEA END HEILBRONNER